Teaching as Inquiry 2018 - Last presentation to staff

• My Inquiry questions:

With target group from Rm 7

‘Will teaching students strategies to craft their sentences in their writing, improve the quality
of their writing and their achievement level?’

With target group from Rm 10

‘Will reading and writing links provide students the awareness of how to craft sentences
to improve their own writing as authors do?’

Changes I’ve made to my practice:

• Linking reading and writing
• I now make sure students are aware of the audience for who they are writing and the purpose for their writing.
• I discourage students from writing every detail, rather encourage students to hone in on a few ideas for elaboration.
• I ask students to point out which language features they used in their writing e.g. using noun phrases, adjectives, adverbs, compound and complex sentences, complex Interruptors, zig-zag sentences etc
• This makes the students more aware of how they craft their sentences
• I have encouraged students to give peer feedback to each other and respond to peer and teacher feedback / feedforward
• Invited a first time author to come in and explain the process he used to write, edit, proof read and publish his story
• Got the target group to review the first time author’s book and provide feedback and ideas for his next book (The author finished his second book and has requested the group to review it)

• Impact of changes either positive or negative and your thoughts on reasons

Assessment data

- Teacher OTJ at the Beginning and End of the year (Rm 7)

Student	Year Level	Beginning of 2018	End of 2018	Impact of changes
Student 1 An	7	4B	4A	Moved up 2 sub levels
Student 2 Da	8	4B	5B	Moved up 3 sub levels
Student 3 De	8	4B	5B	Moved up 3 sub levels
Student 4 Lo	8	3A	4A	Moved up 3 sub levels
Student 5 Ma	7	3A	4P	Moved up 2 sub levels
Student 6 Te	8	4B	5B	Moved up 3 sub levels
Student 7 Tr	8	3P	4A	Moved up 4 sub levels

- Teacher OTJ Mid year and End of the year (Rm 10)

Student	Year Level	Mid year 2018	End of 2018	Impact of changes
Student 1 Ana	6	3A	4B	Moved up 1 sub level
Student 2 Can	7	3B	3A	Moved up 2 sub levels
Student 3 Fran	7	3B	3A	Moved up 2 sub levels
Student 4 Jus	6	2P	3P	Moved up 3 sub levels
Student 5 Nga	6	3B	3A	Moved up 2 sub levels
Student 6 Ty	7	-	3A	Improved

The TAI is still on with the target group in Room 10. The writing of these students has improved
and they do have an idea as to how to craft sentences. The number of sessions this group has
had with me is far less compared with the target group I taught in Room 7

- Student Voice

- Anita

- Davarni

- Dekorah

- Loto

- Maya

- Telesia

• Ideas for inquiry next year:

Work with groups of students from years ⅚ and years ⅞

Continue to inquire into

• Whether linking reading and writing will improve achievement in both reading and writing
• Responding to peer and teacher feedback / feedforward - will this improve the quality of writing and achievement levels?

I enjoyed inquiring into my practice in teaching writing. I am eager to continue working with students and accelerating their progress. 

This term the students in the group are writing recounts and explanations to revise the genre structure and language features, how to craft sentences for effect, grouping ideas in paragraphs, linking paragraphs appropriately using AAAWWUBBIS, writing compound sentences using FANBOYS, using zig zag sentences and complex interruptors in their writing. This is to jog their memories after the holidays and also as a preparation for e-asttle writing assessment.

3 students are writing a recount of an event they participated in and are proud of themselves.
3 students are writing an explanation about why we need to be sun smart.

Can't wait to see if these students will write interesting recounts and explanations using the knowledge of how to craft their writing.

Crafting sentences

In one of our sessions we went over how the students could write any genre in the best possible way by crafting sentences using adjectives, adverbs, complex interrupters, zig zag sentences, simple, compound and complex sentences, linking ideas within paragraphs and linking paragraphs. We discussed how we could use AAAWWUBBIS (After, Although, As, When, While, Until, Before, Because, If, Since) to connect ideas within paragraphs and between paragraphs. We also discussed how we could convert simple sentences to compound sentences using FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).

In the  piece of writing the students were working on, they were meant to make sure they crafted their sentences as they wrote. They also had to show me that they used all the different things they learned for crafting their sentences well. Their pieces of writing are being crafted well with the deliberate teaching of how to craft sentences in their writing no matter what genre they were writing.

I was so pleased that the students are writing and beginning to craft their sentences very well.

It will be interesting to see if the students use all that they learning over the term in their writing test.

Writing a narrative deliberately crafting sentences for effect

The target group is now showing so much promise in doing reciprocal reading, making predictions, clarifying meaning of words, phrases, terminology, comprehending text, voicing opinions, discussing the author's style of writing and summarising the text. They are more open to each other leading. The students are able to justify their opinions more confidently. They are able to identify how the author has used words, phrases, sentence beginnings, punctuation to add effect.

This has enabled them to experiment with their writing and deliberately crafting their sentences for effect. I am so pleased they have written some good narratives. The students are proud of the progress they are making in reading and writing.

Student voice has made me feel good because every student in the group has mentioned that their confidence has gone up especially in the way they read, participate in discussions and in the way they are crafting their writing with confidence.

A couple of students are still not very confident to share their writing with others in the group or in their class. Working on this.

Integrating reading and writing

With the new target group I integrated reading and writing with a focus of doing reciprocal reading to enhance participating and contributing - key competencies that students need to develop. The integration was also to enable students to see what real authors do when they write.

Through the reciprocal reading process these students are showing leadership, participating and contributing more confidently and are getting involved in dialogic discussions.

They are also made aware of the writing style of authors, elements they use to make their writing interesting for the readers.

I am excited with this inquiry because these students are enjoying reciprocal reading and discussions around how the authors craft their sentences and paragraphs to make it enjoyable for the readers.

I see promise!

My new target group

The reason why I chose to work with the new target group is because the students in the new group are less confident participants or contributors in their class room. They are withdrawn, shy and hesitate to be part of dialogic discussions.

We started with a pep talk about being confident participants in class activities and being confident when they share their learning in small or large groups.

The reason I was going to take this group was discussed with the students for buy in to work with me.

The students saw sense in the plan and were enthusiastic participants in our first lesson.

My Teaching as Inquiry Target Group from Room 10

My second round - Teaching as Inquiry

Term 3 started well. I am now going to take a group of girls from Room 10
to be my target group for my teaching as inquiry.  

The reason for taking girls from this room is for helping these girls get more
confident in class and be active participants and contributors to class discussions.
At the moment they are very shy and do not participate fully in class discussions
unless asked to.

My Teaching as Inquiry will be in Reading and Writing

I will be focussing on linking reading and writing to help these students read and
write better.

Reciprocal reading and crafting sentences in their regular writing as authors do
will be the focus.

My hunch:

By learning how writers write (through Reading) for readers to enjoy,
students will be able to identify what writers do and use, to make their writing
enjoyable for a wider audience. This may enable students to write in a better way.

My Inquiry question:

Will reading and writing links provide students the awareness of how to craft
sentences to improve their own writing as the authors do?

I am excited to start with the identified group of six girls. The book we will be
reading first is Music, Magic and Imagination by Jill Eggleton. We will read this book as it relates to the topic study we are doing this term.

The students in the writing group took their e-asttle writing test at the end of Term 2.  Their scripts were marked and moderated.

I am very pleased with the assessment result.


I am very pleased that within the ten weeks with me, all students made gains and improved their writing levels as mentioned in the table. The two students whose levels stayed the same, did improve their e-asttle score for sure and made slight gains. I am happy to have worked with this group. They made me reflect more deeply on how I was teaching and what I could do better. I loved teaching the students in the group and would miss teaching them next term.

In the last session as the writing group we went over how the students would write any genre in the best possible way using all that they learned while in this group. We went over crafting sentences using adjectives, adverbs, complex interrupters, zig zag sentences, simple, compound and complex sentences, linking ideas within paragraphs and linking paragraphs.

In the last piece of writing the students wrote, they were meant to make sure they crafted their sentences as they wrote. They also had to show me that they used all the different things they learned for crafting their sentences well. Their pieces of writing were extra ordinarily good.

I was so pleased that the students were writing very well.

At the end of our writing group programme, last term, the writing group took a mid year e-asttle writing test.

It will be interesting to see if the students used all that they had learned over the term in their writing test.

An exciting day at Glenbrae School

On Tuesday 19th June 2018,  Glenbrae School was buzzing with excitement. Students and staff were excited alike. Anyone entering the school was wondering what all the excitement was about. Well, it was the day we all showcased our favourite characters in books we loved reading, most.

The entire school assembled in the hall for a class by class character parade. Room 1 with new entrants and year 1 students looked the cutest dressed up as their favourite characters. Every class paraded around the hall. Students and staff paraded with pride. It was hilarious to see Mrs Ripata, Miss Pauvale and Mr Nath dancing away in their costumes. This was so much fun.

The poetry recitals from each class were so good. Some students spoke clearly and projected their voices. Room 7 students recited poems about refugees and also recited up side down poems. This was interesting enough to keep the audience engaged.

After lunch, we had the Story Line performance that presented fun story telling about how important it is to read and enjoy reading.

The day ended with all of us at Glenbrae still excited and buzzing about the great day we had around reading books and dressing up as our favourite characters.

The writing group was asked to write an article about the events of the day. Students were grouped and assigned parts of the day they had to report about. To see how articles are written in the East and Bays Courier, we accessed the newspaper online and read articles in the newspaper. We then unpacked the structure and language features of the writing an article as a reporter. We discussed who the audience was and what the purpose for writing this report was. After this the students were reminded that after they drafted their parts, they would deliberately craft their sentences and paragraphs to make the writing interesting for being published in the East and Bays Courier.
Students are writing and crafting their portions of the article. Need to finish this and make sure the paragraphs all link, the article is informative and showcases Glenbrae School as a school of choice.

Writing for the East & Bays Courier

The Writing group did a great job and wrote an article to be published in the East & Bays Courier.

Glenbrae School's Book Week Celebrations











I am so proud of the writing group. Davarni Soane-Rakete's story has also been sent to the children's magazine Toi Toi to be published.

Neil Geoffrey's visit

The author, Neil Geoffrey visited the writing group and the other junior classes who enjoyed listening to his story Gassy Goosey and the Hawk that he wrote. What better way to show our students that anyone can be an author if we know who we are writing for and why?

The excited writing group spoke with the author. They discussed what they thought about the book he had written. They asked him questions about the process he used to write his book. They asked him which part of the process he enjoyed the most. The author told the group that he most enjoyed drafting his imaginary, oral stories he made up to narrate to his own children. The other thing he enjoyed was working with the illustrator to make sure the illustrations matched the ideas he had written down.

The author told the writing group to keep writing a lot with an audience and purpose in mind.
He said that there was a lot of joy in writing. He assured the students in the writing group that
they needed to believe in their abilities to write and polish their writing before publishing.

From talking with the author the students did understand that crafting their sentences

deliberately will improve the way they write for an audience.
Our endeavour to work on crafting sentences, made sense for the students
after this great experience.

Author Neil Geoffrey's visit to Glenbrae School - Excitement over this!

Author Neil Geoffrey got back to the students in the writing group and assured them that he would visit them on Monday 18th June 2018 at Glenbrae School. This he did through Chris B who relayed the message. Excitement over this was obvious! The students were excited. Neil Geoffrey was coming to discuss with them the book review that the students did for his first book Gassey Goosey that is soon to be published. 

The students planned what to say to him about the book review they did and convey some ideas for the next book that he could write.  They collaborated and came up with questions they would ask him.

The students also went to the junior and senior classes - year 0 to year 5 students and read the book Gassey Goosey to them. Besides the students who went to read to the students, two student observers also went to the different classes to observe the reactions of the students who were listening to the story being read so they could confirm that the book was written for a younger audience.

Doing the book review helped these students in the writing group understand the fact that to write a narrative for a target audience is a big process and that it takes time and effort to write, read, re read, edit and proof read, craft sentences all the while to improve their narrative and bring it to a stage that the book is ready for publishing. They are excited to meet with the author as they are curious to know how long it took for the author to write his story which is now ready for publishing. They are keen to ask the author which part of the writing process he most enjoyed and why and other burning questions they have. 
I will keep everyone posted as to what happened when the author visited the group.

Students in the writing group completed their narratives and provided positive, thoughtful and helpful peer feedback to each other. They were honest in their feedback. I noticed that after receiving feedback from peers, the students wanted clarifications, challenged the peer feedback in a friendly manner and pointed to the evidence in the narrative in case the students were told to do something that they had already done. This was heartening to see. I loved listening in and felt proud of how students were giving and receiving feedback. 

I provided the students effective feedback too. I told the students to tell me if they thought that the feedback was not accurate or effective.  The students said that the feedforward they received was very helpful.

Students are at this moment responding to both peer and teacher feedback and crafting their sentences and paragraphs to improve their writing. 

On asking if the process we were following was good or needed improvement, the students responded that the process was good but the time given for responding to feedback was less than what they expected. 

I have started working with one student at a time, going through the feedback provided and what the student did as a response. This I think is enabling the students to understand the feedback and respond appropriately. 

I am enjoying this process. I am proud of one student whose narrative is ready for publishing in the magazine Toi Toi.

Noticing about me as a teacher

It’s exciting to see teachers adopting the idea of thoughtfully considered reflective questions for themselves, as well as for the learners, in continued pursuit of the goal of developing the whole child – and the whole teacher! – rather than simply focusing on curriculum content.

If I want the children in my class to be creative, how might I encourage creative experimentation? How will I foster creative thinking and problem solving?

From:

WHAT DO YOU NOTICE ABOUT YOURSELF AS A TEACHER? JUNE 2, 2018 | WHATEDSAID

https://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2018/06/02/what-do-you-notice-about-yourself-as-a-teacher/ 

Well, after reading this excerpt from WhatEdsaid, I worked on doing something different to encourage creative experimentation. My writing group got a chance to review a book that was written by Neil Geoffrey and illustrated by Richard Hlt. This book "Gassy Goosey" is a first time author's book-yet to be published. What better chance than reviewing this book for my writers in my group to experience. This process of reviewing the book was a great chance for the students to read the book and talk about the style of writing, the ideas, the vocabulary and the audience and purpose for writing this book. My group thoroughly enjoyed reviewing the book. They are now keen on reading the book to the younger students in the school in order to test out they were right in saying that this book was written for 5 to 7 year olds for enjoying listening to the story. 

Reviewing the book also gave my group a chance to understand what it takes to be an author and a good illustrator.

The students have also e-mailed the author to invite him over to discuss what they reviewed with reasons. We are waiting for Neil Geoffrey to meet with them and receive feedback for his next book. This I think is creative experimentation. I have fostered creative thinking and problem solving.